|
How To Assure Your Win Is Certain So you’ve shown your dog and you are standing in line getting your purple winner’s ribbon (or perhaps even the Best of Breed, Best of Opposite Sex, and/or Best of Winners). The points belong to your dog and makes them that much closer to their championship, or perhaps even finished! Now it is time to take a few precautions to be certain that the win will show up and count with AKC. A little time now may save you a lot of headaches down the road. The first thing to do is grab a comb or brush, maybe recruit a friend, and get a photo taken of the win. Sometimes this is done right after the Best of Breed competition, once the ring steward has summoned a photographer, and other times you need to wait until a break in the assignment. A wait usually happens when there are other breeds following Goldens, so look on the page outside the ring and this should give you an idea. Or simply see if non-Goldens are waiting to go in. Now that you have your photo, you can put your dog away (or perhaps exercise/potty the dog) and tidy up things at your set up, if needed, as you wait for the “tear sheets” to be posted. For those who don’t know what a tear sheet is, this is the multi-copy page that has all the entered dogs’ numbers listed for the class they are in. The page is marked by the judge as to which dogs are absent, which dogs placed, and also if any dogs are excused or disqualified. At some point (and this can often take an hour or more), the tear sheets are clipped up on a board near the superintendent’s temporary office area. The board has a clip for each group, so of course Goldens are under the SPORTING section. Some breeds only have one page, but Goldens usually have 2 or 3, sometimes more (we are the highest entry breed in conformation with 3% of all entries for over 160 breeds!) Once the tear sheets are up, you need to be certain that your dog’s number is marked as the winner. At the least, be sure to know your armband number and be sure that this is the number marked as winner. Better yet, take a catalog along and mark down all the dogs’ notations (placements, winners, absentees, and excused or DQed dogs, if there were any). If the counts were important to hold points, be sure to count the dogs listed on the tear sheets, too, as you need to be sure that they agree with what was shown. This, of course, needs to be done at the show site but there are a few other things you can do once you get home as well if you have Internet access. First of all, within a few days of the show, the superintendents will often post results. Not every superintendent does this, but many do. It is a good idea to check that the listings are correct there and if they aren’t, contact the superintendent about the error so they can correct it. Another area to check that takes a bit longer to be posted, but is more important than the superintendents’ sites, is the AKC. By going to the AKC Online store under POINTS AND AWARDS, you can check the points and title progression of your dog once you are logged in as a member. In fact, you can check any dog’s record for AKC titles! http://www.akc.org/store/reports/ Once you get logged on, you can research up to ten dogs per day. It is helpful to have the AKC registration number, but you can also search by name and breed. The information will tell you how many points a dog has, how many judges have awarded points on this dog, and how many majors the dog has. But remember, results take a little while to be posted. There will be a date supplied to tell you up to what date they have input data. I highly recommend that you check this after a few weeks to be sure you got credit for your wins. Lastly, if there is a problem, be sure you have your win photo and ribbons to prove the win. Without them, it could be much harder to get the credit you are due. In general, if the tear sheets are correct, then you have little to worry about. But I know several people who have needed to follow through on an incorrect recording, and it seems some of them did not get the points as well. Typically the lost points are over a miscount on someone’s part of the number of dogs present. So it is important to check records, especially the tear sheets, and keep proof via ribbons and photos if there is any question. It takes a lot of time, hard work, and money to finish a dog. So be sure you get credit where credit is due. Once your dog finishes his championship, the POINTS AND AWARDS area of the AKC website (URL above) will list this as part of the dog’s name as well, so that is another little perk to checking back. I get satisfaction seeing it officially in print! But the most important part is to be sure your wins are recorded correctly. If not, you need to follow up on that and your having the proof could mean the difference in if the win is really yours or not in the end. As always, I encourage anyone with ideas on issues
I’ve discussed, or issues they would like to see addressed, to please share
their thoughts with me. I can be reached at shilogr@yahoo.com
Thanks so much! |
|
|